Google recruit world's most notorious hacker

The Google Project Zero team will be responsible for finding and identifying critical bugs and software vulnerabilities.

Hotz aged 24, will help Project Zero to not only find problems in Google's software but also in the software of other technology developers. The world-renowned hacker rose to prominence after he hacked the Sony PlayStation 3 and Apple's iPhone.

With his online persona known as geohot, Hotz hacked the PS3 in 2009 so it could play illegally pirated titles. Sony took him to court but they eventually reach an out-of-court settlement, provided Hotz agreed not to hack future Sony products.

Two years prior to this Hotz became the first person to carrier unlock an original iPhone so it could work on any network. He ended up releasing a number of iPhone jailbreaks popular with the Apple community, these included Blackra1n, Greenpois0n and limera1n.

Google themselves also fell victim to Hotz when he hacked into their not so successful Chrome operating system.

Not all of Hotz's hacking has been bad though, he was once awarded $150,000 as part of a hacking competition arranged by computer manufacturer Hewlett Packard.

The man who is heading Google Project Zero said of the project: "You should be able to use the web without fear that a criminal or state-sponsored actor is exploiting software bugs to infect your computer, steal secrets or monitor your communications.

"Yet in sophisticated attacks, we see the use of 'zero-day' vulnerabilities to target, for example, human rights activists or to conduct industrial espionage. This needs to stop.

Alex Dodd

Alex is a third year sports journalism student at Staffordshire University. As well as his love for sport he has a huge passion for technology and always has his eye on the breaking news in the tech world.